JEDDAH: Jeddah police on Monday began taking bone samples from the bodies of people who died during the recent flashfloods to run DNA tests and identify them. They will compare the results with samples from relatives of the missing as part of further efforts to identify victims still in the morgue at King Abdul Aziz Hospital in Jeddah.
Head of the Department of Forensic Evidence Col. Saleh Zwaid Al-Ghamdi told Arab News that the tests were crucial in identifying the bodies, particularly decomposed ones, so they could be handed over to their families for burial.
He said forensics experts began their work after the disaster, photographing the dead bodies and taking fingerprints for future identification.
He said some bodies at the morgue were too deformed for relatives to recognize. “So we had to resort to DNA testing to identify them.”
Al-Ghamdi said it would take them at least a week to announce the results because the samples were taken from dead bones. He said the results of the DNA tests from relatives would not take more than 72 hours because the samples were taken from their blood.
He said the relatives were only being shown pictures of the dead bodies.
According to Civil Defense figures 49 out of 116 dead bodies have not been identified.
